Sunday
by planet p
Summary: AU; a discussion.


**Sunday** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

* * *

Sunday, January 3

It was her birthday. Actually, it wasn't just her birthday; she shared the date with her twin brother. So, she supposed, it was his birthday, too; it was their birthday.

She didn't really think about it; they weren't great friends. They'd grown up apart; he'd been adopted out as an infant, and she'd been the one to stay with her biological mother. The truth was, her mother and father had believed him to have died, to have been born stillborn; she'd been alone.

As she'd gotten older, she hadn't made friends with all of the other kids in her grade at school, though she'd supposed her parents, at least, her father, had expected it; but, no, she'd never made friends easily.

One of her first friends had been a girl whose family she had stayed with on a frequent basis when younger; their families had been friends before everything had fallen apart. Annie. She'd been four years older than her, and, now, she'd been told by her father, William, that he was, in fact, her father; so they'd been half sisters.

She had no comment on that; she knew he was lying to cover up for someone, she just had a hard time trying to establish who that might be; she had a hard time buying the rumours.

Possibly, her next friend would have been Jarod and Timmy, if she didn't count her brief friendship with… well, she'd never found out his name, and, really, what was the point, he hadn't even been real! He'd been an imaginary friend.

Since she'd started to remember, she found the whole thing strange: her imaginary friend had suspiciously looked like her, as though, subconsciously, she'd known she was a twin, and had been compensating for the loss by making up her _own_ twin for herself. All that was fine, she supposed, but what wasn't fine, what she didn't get, was why her twin had looked like her, when he'd been a he; identical twins were always either girls and girls, or boys and boys.

Of course, she'd had no way of knowing that as a four-year-old.

After Jarod and Timmy, there had been her adopted sister, Faith. They hadn't stayed friends for very long; Faith had died. And then, after Faith, for a long time, no-one.

She'd been sent away to a boarding school in Canada, an all girls establishment which catered for high-school level through to university. By then, her mother was gone; even Annie was gone. She'd been kidnapped; she'd never returned. Annie's mother had been murdered, and she'd been prohibited from seeing either Jarod or Timmy by simple distance.

She'd met her first, and last, best friend in Canada; 12-year-old Mimi, and, for a while, she'd been happy, happy to have a friend. And then she'd done a stupid thing and it had gotten both her best friend and her unborn baby killed, and narrowly avoided taking her along with them. Mimi had only been 15, she'd been 22; the baby hadn't even been born.

She supposed, in a way, that was the night she gave up on love.

And now, decades later, here she was; alone, sitting at home, on her birthday, with no friends. There was Sydney, and Broots, there was even Broots's daughter, Debbie, but it wasn't the same. She missed Mimi. Mimi had been the sister she'd never had. Sometimes, she even thought, as the years had moved steadily along, that she'd become like the daughter she'd never had.

She couldn't have kids, after all; the accident had seen to that, just as it had seen to her baby and Mimi.

Her brother had a son; she'd helped to deliver him. It had killed his mother, and, for a long time, she'd wondered if the woman had really been the baby's mother, if her brother really was his father. It was just like the people she worked for to pull something like that, but, no, as he'd grown it had become quite apparent; he was her brother's child.

Even then, she had no way of knowing for sure if the person she thought was her brother truly was her brother. The only connection she felt to him was despise. It was nothing like the connection she felt for her half brother, Ethan. Ethan, she could love; she certainly did not love her twin. Some days, she even found herself thinking, more than just wishing, that they'd all be better off if he was dead.

Her brother's son, who was officially their 'little brother' was to be ten this year; she had just turned 50.

She was never going to have children of her own, and, even if she'd known this all along, as she had, from the moment of waking up after the accident, it hurt all the more now; now that she was too old to do so. Too old, now, even to dream that it might happen.

She sat in her expensively furnished lounge room, reading a romance novel by one of her favourite romance authors, Kurt McCarty, daydreaming about Thomas, her long since deceased fiancé.

Well, weren't birthdays wonderful!

Christmas, and New Year's, had recently passed, and, for a moment, as the memory returned to her, she continued reading the novel she was holding, before closing it and putting it down to mull over the memory further.

Suddenly, she was seized with an odd feeling. Her father, or the man she'd known as her father for the most part of her life – in honesty, he had been her father – had been dead for eight years, so it was quite odd that she'd received a phone call from him on Christmas wishing her a Happy Christmas and apologising that he wouldn't be able to make it, but that he'd make it up to her.

Slowly, she began to frown. Actually, it was more than quite odd – it was very odd!

At the time, she'd dismissed it as someone trying to wind her up; it had to be a recording of an old conversation they'd shared over the telephone, but one minor detail didn't add up: her father had never used the term _Happy Christmas_! He had always, if he was to refer after the festivity itself, used _Merry Christmas_.

Happy Christmas was what her best friend had used to call it!

She stared at nothing for a long moment, and then slowly stood and moved in the vague direction of the telephone. She didn't know if her father had ever rang her brother for the same reason, though she supposed it was worth a try. He'd seemed so happy to finally have a son!

She remembered clearly that she'd felt undeservedly cheated. What had she done wrong? She'd always done everything right! Everything because he was the last living member of her family and family stuck together; because she'd loved him.

She didn't know her brother's phone number, and she didn't have the number for his cell phone. She had to look it up in the phone book, hoping, all the while, that it was listed. She found it under _Parker, L._, though, surprisingly, there were other L. Parker's living in Blue Cove. It wasn't a problem, though, because she knew her brother's address; she'd been to his house before, when she'd broken in.

She put the number in the phone and listened to it ringing, wondering if he would be home to pick it up, or if he'd be out: it was his birthday, after all.

"Lyle Parker," he answered.

"Stop it," she told him jokingly, "I feel weird. I'm home, and you, too. I thought you'd be out, celebrating."

"Celebrating what?" he asked, after a lengthy pause.

"Your birthday," she said.

"It isn't my birthday," he said, as though she'd said something extremely bizarre. "It's my birthday," she said, at last, wondering if she should, and then, finally, deciding _Bugger it._

"I'm not used to this January birthday thing; my birthday's always been in August," he explained.

She remembered that that had been Bobby's birthday; August… She couldn't remember the exact day. "Daddy didn't ring you on Christmas, did he?" she asked, deciding to just cut to the chase.

"No, sis, he didn't, but… ah, that's probably because he's dead."

"It never hurts to ask," she replied.

"I wouldn't be so sure, sis. That was a pretty str-"

"Oh, shut up! Would you stop saying I'm strange, already!"

"What else am I supposed to say you are?"

"Nothing!"

"Nothing? So… I should just say nothing to you? You're my sister and I should pretend I don't know you, and, pardon me, that I've never met you before in my life."

"That's not what I meant! You know what I meant! I meant that I'd fucking rather you not make judgements on my character because, let's face it, you don't fucking know me!"

"So what?"

"And I don't want you to, either!" she added, her voice a notch louder than before.

"So why are you ringing me again?" he asked.

"To ask if Daddy rang you."

"No, he didn't; thank you and goodbye. Oh, right, I should add first, congratulations on your birthday, stranger."

She glared at the wall, but, by then, he'd hung up. She put the phone down. _What a creep!_ She sighed, and walked back to the lounge.

That was probably the longest conversation she'd ever shared with her twin brother over the phone; she felt oddly like writing it down in her diary and ripping the page out and throwing it away. She felt contaminated.

_What a bitch!_ she chided herself.

She sat down, picked up her novel, and went on reading. _'Congratulations on your birthday,' ha ha!_

* * *

Half an hour had passed, and it had really started to bug her, not knowing the day of her brother's former birthday. She put the book away on the couch beside her and decided that she would find out; she was going to ring him up and wish him a Happy Birthday, too. As though she'd wanted to hear _that_! _Happy… ah, fiftieth birthday! No need to feel old, or anything!_

She found the file she'd been looking for in her study, and sat down behind her desk to read it. _August 16._ She repeated the date to herself a couple of times, trying to get it to stick, and flipped through the file, wondering if there were any pictures of her brother as a child.

It had been Broots's file, but he'd given it to her, having no desire to keep it, himself. She'd dumped it in her filing cabinet and never given it a second thought. She'd found out enough about the little creep in the pursuit of Jarod that she hadn't needed to know anymore; the bits she'd got from Jarod, and found out later, after asking around, had been quite enough.

She peered down at a photograph of her brother and his best friend, Jimmy, whom he'd murdered. The picture must have been taken at a school working bee, or a fete, or something like that. It looked more like a fete; like they were celebrating something. There was a girl sitting with them; she supposed the girl was Jimmy's girlfriend. She looked Spanish, or of Spanish descent. She was wearing braces on her teeth.

They were sitting at a table, out in the schoolyard somewhere, though the table had clearly been taken from one of the classrooms. Jimmy was watching the activities at one of the stalls; the girl was working on a crossword in what looked like a Spanish-language magazine. Bobby was frowning, looking away at nothing in particular, from the little she could see of what might have taken his interest.

She was about to go on looking for other pictures, curious as to who the girl was, when she noticed that he was wearing something on his right wrist. It didn't look like a watch; there was no metallic gleam.

After a long moment, she decided it was a bracelet of beads.

Maybe she had been wrong, she thought suddenly, maybe the girl was his girlfriend, maybe she'd been the one who'd given him the bracelet.

She returned her attention to the girl; she didn't strike her as her brother's type, somehow. Even as a teenager, it didn't seem likely that he'd have been at all interested in her.

She wasn't fat, but she wasn't skinny, either. She was tanned, and she wore braces. Her dress sense was disgustingly underdeveloped, or else she just didn't have the money for nice things, and that, more than anything, struck as particularly odd as her brother's adoptive family had had money. He had been used to money, even as a boy. It didn't seem likely that he would hook up with a poor girl.

She looked for a matching bracelet on the girl's wrist, but there was none; on either wrist. She wondered if the girl was wearing hers on her ankle, or if jewellery was banned at the school and she'd been too scared to wear it, whereas Bobby just hadn't cared less about the School Rules.

Jimmy didn't have a bracelet, either, if it had been some boy's club thing.

She let her mind play, thinking about the jewellery she'd worn as a girl. She'd never been a beady girl, she decided, and, at that moment, she recalled something strange, something from a long, long time ago: her imaginary friend had had beads; he'd even worn them on the same hand that Bobby wore his.

She felt a small shiver run through her, not enough to show, but enough that she could clearly feel it.

Had Bobby seen her imaginary friend, too?

She took the photo from the file and placed it to the side, on the desk, and began looking for other pictures.

In the photo she'd found, Bobby had been about 16, she decided, though he'd looked as though he'd have passed more readily as a 15-year-old; Jarod had told her that that was just how her brother was, it was probably due to the problems he'd had at birth.

She needed to find a younger photo, she needed to know when Bobby had first got the bracelet, if, perhaps, it had belonged to another little boy before he'd come into possession of it.

There was a photo of Bobby in 1968. The year was written on the back in what she supposed was Elsie Bowman's handwriting; Bobby had been eight. He looked more like six, or seven. She frowned, and reached for the photo of Bobby at 16.

Her mind was telling her that something didn't add up; each of the boys in the photographs shared an undeniable similarity, but they were not the same boy; they couldn't be!

Her heart started to beat faster; something very big was happening, but, as yet, it remained something that she couldn't quite grasp.

She searched for other photos, her actions almost frantic, now. She had an awful, awful feeling. She felt slightly sick.

In the end, she'd managed to dig up five photos and one newspaper cutting featuring a print of a photo of Bobby and his mom, Elsie, outside her work, a hairdresser's in town.

She laid all the photos out, one by one, according to the years on the back; the other four all had dates on the back; and turned them over, scanning each of the pictures in turn.

She hadn't paid much attention to the newspaper cutting yet.

Her hands started to shake. In each of the pictures, the boy looked similar to the boy before, but not the same, never exactly the same.

She returned her attention to the newspaper cutting, her heart thudding heavily in her chest now, and, perhaps just for a second, she stopped breathing: the boy looked like her, exactly like her, but for that his hair was curly.

Slowly, she corrected. No, not exactly like her; exactly like her imaginary friend. He was wearing the same bracelet he had been wearing in the photograph of his school fete, only 12 years earlier.

Their eyes were different, she realised, just slightly different. It wasn't the colour, though the photograph in the cutting was black-and-white, it was the shape. The shape of Bobby's eyes, and those of her imaginary friend, those of Bobby in each picture, remained unchanged; constant. She was wrong: it was the same boy.

Somehow.

She stacked the pictures together, and returned them to the file. Her hands still had not stopped shaking.

* * *

She stood by the telephone, waiting for it to pick up, knowing it had to pick up; it had to because she needed to speak to her brother, to arrange that they should meet and that she would be able to speak to him in person.

Before leaving her study, she had changed her mind and pocketed the pictures. She'd put them into an envelope, and taken them with her.

"Could we go out for a coffee?" she asked immediately, after the line had been answered.

Lyle seemed to think it over, because he didn't speak all at once. Then, finally, he said, "If that's what you'd like us to do."

"We should talk," she added.

"Do you have a place in mind?"

"Whiskers Blake." She'd once worked at the restaurant over her holidays from school; it had been a work experience arrangement, she'd been 17. The seafood place had changed immensely since then; they'd even dropped their old jingle. She could still remember that annoying jingle.

"Say, in half an hour," she added, before hanging up.

She didn't have long to get ready; she got straight to it.

* * *

The restaurant had gone highbrow, glamorous, and, from the looks of it, it showed. She made her way toward the bar, only to find that Lyle had taken a seat at one of the tables. She changed course, and finally sunk into a chair across the table.

He made no comment on her clothes; he didn't even appear particularly interested, which struck her as odd.

Finally, he said, "It's warm enough in here that you'll probably want to take that off later," referring, she assumed, after her coat, "but, for outside, it was a good idea to bring it along. There's always something going around in cities and big towns, and it's better not to overdo your chance of coming down with anything by neglecting your health."

She frowned, finding the comment even odder than his lack of comment on what was usually a regular topic for him; her good looks.

"I've ordered you a coffee; it shouldn't be all that long arriving now; I hope I got it right."

"Black, three sugars if it's bitter; if Sydney's with me, make that one sugar."

He nodded, smiling just slightly; something like that.

"You're not having one?" she asked, for something to say.

"No, I'd had one at home; a few minutes before you phoned," he replied.

She took out the envelope, willing her hands not to tremble. "I wanted to show you some pictures," she told him.

"Need I ask what these pictures are of?" he asked.

She took the pictures out of the envelope and turned the ones that were facing down up.

"You're wondering who the people in the pictures with me are?" he said.

"Actually, not as much as you'd think," she told him. "I was wondering why," she took the newspaper cutting and placed it beside the photograph of the school fete, "if you take these two pictures, who are clearly both of the same person, you, you can hardly see a resemblance between these two people at all," she finished.

He looked at the first picture, the one in the newspaper cutting, and then the other. "I hadn't noticed," he said. "I hadn't thought of that, but, now that you point it out, I suppose you are right; it is quite difficult to make that connection." He glanced up into her face. "It's the age difference, of course."

She frowned, "I thought that, too, at first, but then I looked at these other pictures, and, do you see what happens; in each of the pictures, the boy looks slightly different."

"What do you mean, 'the boy'?" Lyle asked, but he said it without any real seriousness.

"I'm wondering if this is you; if it is you in each of these pictures, or, if it's just you in the last picture," she said.

He frowned. "Of course it's me; that's what it says, isn't it." He pointed to Jimmy, who was in two other pictures apart from the fete picture. "There, that's Jimmy. Why else would Jimmy be in the picture if it wasn't with me?"

"I don't know."

The girl was in two of the pictures, the fete photograph and one other, also with Jimmy. It was obvious they'd been friends even as younger kids.

"This is Ignacia. We were friends; Jimmy, Ignacia and I. Later, we were… together. She was a nice girl. She loved me, and, at the time, I thought I loved her, too. It wasn't the sort of love you might think it was; she was my best friend; I trusted her, and she trusted me. We weren't in love, but I loved her. At least, I liked to think that I did. It didn't seem fair to think that… it was just a game for me; it didn't seem fair on her."

"You're saying she would know if her friend suddenly… wasn't her friend anymore?"

He frowned, "What are you thinking?"

"I'm just asking a couple of questions about my brother, that's all," she replied.

"Well, now you have your answers," he told her.

She noticed, when he reached over for his glass of water, that he was wearing the same bracelet, and wondered why she hadn't noticed it before. "Did your mom give you that?" she asked, nodding. Then elaborated, "That bracelet?"

"I imagine that she very well did," he answered. "I don't remember when and why, but I imagine that she did."

"Did you know, you're wearing them in each of these pictures, too?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"And, that was allowed? I mean to say, nobody worried that you'd choke on them, as a child. Or, the teachers didn't complain that it was against dress code regulations?"

"Not that I ever recall."

"You never just… outgrew them, or suddenly found them embarrassing, one day? When you got older, you weren't worried that they'd tie you to your old life as Bobby?"

"The past is the past, there's no need to be angry at it if we know that we can't change that. We can change our behaviour, how we act, in the future, however. That, we can. If we remember the past, if we take into account our past actions, then they can help us to improve as people; we don't have to fear them. It's over now, the past is gone; it's happened, it's done."

"That isn't how other people look at it. What if someone recognised you, or your bracelet?"

"You're right of course."

"Then why do you still wear it?" she asked.

"I'm fond of it."

"You're fond of it?"

"Yes. It reminds me of good things."

She frowned, then nodded to the waitress who'd brought out her coffee, placing it on the table before her.

"Thank you," Lyle told the young woman.

Parker glanced at him, but he'd already forgotten about the waitress. She wasn't Asian, she was of no particular interest to him, she supposed.

"I find it all very strange, very peculiar," she told him.

"You may indeed," he agreed.

She had the sudden thought that he was acting very odd, even his manner of speech was different from language he used conversed with around her. It annoyed her that she'd taken the same formality on, as though the occasion, their shared birthday, seemed to call for it.

It was strange, too, she thought, how he'd so casually pointed out the friend he'd murdered. As though in fond regard. Her stomach gave a small protest; her brother really could disgust her, sometimes.

"Ignacia seems familiar to me somehow," she said. "I think we may have met, sometime in the past."

"She's Plum's mother," Lyle explained. "You'll probably have put it together from her accent that Plum is originally from Nebraska, undoubtedly."

She frowned. "Actually, I've never paid all that much attention to her," she replied, remembering with a disturbing clarity that her brother was said to have three children with the woman, who was one of Cox's nurses, and one half of the duo, the Cherryplums; the other half was her slim, blonde friend, Cherry.

For a long moment, she was silent. She lifted her mug up and took a sip of the coffee; it was quite nice, but not all that bitter; clearly, only one sugar had been added to it. "She was born when? 1978?"

"That's right," Lyle replied. "She was."

"Is she your daughter?"

He smiled. "Nah, but… I think she thinks something else, I think she thinks I'm her father, yes."

"You're not?"

"No."

"But you're the father of her three children?"

"No. Not really. Their father, well… it's better for her this way, to have someone to say is their father, rather than it just being, _Ah, he's an absent father, he doesn't care about his children_."

"You're not their father?" she clarified.

"Nooo."

"And… what do they think?"

"Of course, they know that I am not their father; they probably even know that I'm not their grandfather, as their mother believes; kids often seem to sense things like that, but, perhaps, as they grow older, they'll forget and they'll start to believe the same thing as their mother, eventually."

"So you think your girlfriend was playing up?" she asked.

"I think 'girlfriend' is the wrong word to use. She wasn't beholden to me, and neither I to her; that was very clear from the beginning of our relationship. As I earlier mentioned, she trusted me. We weren't young anymore, not… in that way. I think she realised that, for all she knew, it could be years, or even longer, until the person whom she felt a real connection with came along, and maybe, not at all. I liked her, if not loved her; she was a good kid. She was never mean to me, not seriously, in any case, it was just kid's stuff. She never tried to hold it over me that we'd got together, and I never did that to her. But, yes, I do think, in time, we would have found others to fulfil the role we each fulfilled for the other, and that would have been okay, it would have been great."

"You have no idea, then, who Plum's father is?" she pressed.

"Of course I do; she told me as much. I think, in her own way, she'd been in love with him for a long, long time; I just don't think she'd been able to admit it to herself. Jimmy is Plum's father. She told me that they'd had a night together. It hadn't been very glamorous, and she'd been left disappointed at the end of the night, but Jimmy had already had a girlfriend, and, I suppose, he'd been reluctant to believe that… that maybe just he'd fallen a little in love with Ignacia, too. It just seemed… I think it would have seemed strange to him."

"Because she was your girlfriend? Because he felt as though he'd betrayed you?"

"No! No, I think he understood very well what was between us. We'd… drifted apart over the years, I suppose; I'd scared him once, I think, but once had been enough; it had been a decent effort, I gather, and, since then, he'd been reluctant… perhaps guarded is the better word, around me; Ignacia had stuck with me, he'd suddenly grown interested in girls and found himself a girlfriend. It was in no way fair of me to have acted toward him the way I did then, and, then, after breaking us apart, to take Ignacia, too; it was unfair in the worst way possible. But, I guess, in the end, it was Ignacia's choice. Perhaps, even, the hurt she'd brought him then was enough to… to cool any thoughts of a real romance between them, of anything other than a physical relationship. It was uncomfortable; from either side, it wasn't nice. I guess I was the most callous one, in all of it, and I hurt them both so that they ended up believing me to be the blameless one and each other to be the ones at fault. At that age, I didn't think about these things. It was me. I thought about me."

She sipped her coffee again, saying nothing. Even if he was lying to her, she found it interesting to see what he came up with anyway.

His cell phone rang. He answered it in the same manner as he'd answered his home phone, "Lyle Parker."

When he smiled, she found herself taking particular notice. It was obvious to her that he wasn't just chatting to Cox; perhaps it was a new girlfriend?

"Ah, no; no, I'm out," he replied, in answer to a question from the person on the other end of the connection. "With my sister, actually. We're… she's having coffee, and I'm boring her with… ah, we were talking about our younger days. I haven't got around to asking her anything yet, but I do intend to come up with something suitable that isn't quite as boresome as my own… past."

He smiled. "Oh, it isn't is it? Of course not. I should ask- Yes! I think I should. How are you? You're 'okay.' Come on, tell me honestly. How am I?" He rolled his eyes; of course, he would have to answer the question first before the other person could, "I'm okay! I _am_ a hypocrite. No, I am; I'm okay. And you are, too. That's good to know." He laughed. "Okay. Look after yourself, as well. Bye."

She placed her mug of coffee down on the table in front of her, watching him put his phone away. "Your girlfriend?" she asked.

"Yep. She says, 'Happy Birthday.'"

"That's very kind of her. I gather that you've told her about me."

"Mmm-hmm."

"Is it serious?"

"Oh, you know…"

"Not really."

"She's nice."

"Nice, but not… a keeper?" She felt stupid talking about girlfriends with her brother as though he could care less; she imagined that he'd not had a serious girlfriend that he hadn't later on gone on to murder.

"She's very nice, and I would be saddened to see her ever hurt," he told her.

She raised her eyebrows, unconvinced, somehow.

"I would," he repeated.

"Unless of course… it was you doing the hurting," she let slip, before she could stop herself. She hadn't been able to help it.

"I don't think that's quite fair, and, further to that, I don't think it's true. I care about her a lot. She's a nice woman and I couldn't imagine her doing anything to hurt me, so why should I hurt her?"

"I think you know that's not how it works," she said. He knew alright; he knew damn well!

"I would very much like us to… move past the stage we are at now, but I have a feeling that that wouldn't be what was best for either of us."

"How considerate of you!"

"I think we've come to the stage where we should call it a quits for today, don't you?" Lyle asked pleasantly, but firmly.

She widened her eyes at him, "Run away then! Off you go!"

He nodded and stood up from the table, "It was interesting… catching up," he told her, "and I do hope that the afternoon goes well for you. Goodbye."

She smiled mockingly. "Bye-bye!"

She watched him walk away, and felt angry. She drew the pictures together and stuffed them back into the envelope, and stalked to the bar to ask if the coffee had been paid for in advance, to which she received a nod of affirmation, and directed her angry steps toward the door.


End file.
